Aguilar-Mediavilla Eva, Sanz-Torrent Mònica, Serra-Raventós Miquel
Department of Applied Pedagogy and Educational Psychology, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2007 May-Jun;42(3):325-47. doi: 10.1080/13682820600881527.
The profiles of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) differ greatly according to the language they speak. The Surface Hypothesis attempts to explain these differences through the theory that children with SLI will incorrectly produce elements in their language with low phonological weights or that are produced in a non-canonical prosodic structure.
Previous studies have shown that the most characteristics errors produced by Catalan and Spanish-speaking children with SLI include function word omission (morpho-syntax) and weak syllable omission (phonology). The omission of function words points to a morpho-syntactic explanation of SLI, while weak syllable omission supports a phonological explanation of SLI. Yet, function words are weak syllables; thus, it is possible that the same mechanism underlies both problems.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: Data were extracted from spontaneous language produced by five children with SLI and five comparison children matched for age and MLU-w. They were assessed on two occasions: at 3;10 and 4;9 years of age. These interviews were then transcribed and the morphological and phonological errors coded. A non-parametric mean analysis and various regression analyses were conducted.
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The results show that function word omission and weak syllable omission were the most characteristic errors made by Spanish and Catalan-speaking children with SLI and established that omissions increase as prosodic weight decreases. They also indicated that weak syllabic omission may explain most function word omissions.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The data support the Surface Hypothesis and suggest that the same impaired mechanism may underlie the morphological and phonological problems SLI children display.
患有特定语言障碍（SLI）的儿童的语言特征因他们所讲的语言而有很大差异。表层假说试图通过这样的理论来解释这些差异，即患有SLI的儿童会错误地生成其语言中语音权重较低或具有非规范韵律结构的元素。
先前的研究表明，讲加泰罗尼亚语和西班牙语的患有SLI的儿童产生的最典型错误包括功能词省略（形态句法）和弱音节省略（语音）。功能词的省略指向了对SLI的形态句法解释，而弱音节省略则支持了对SLI的语音解释。然而，功能词是弱音节；因此，这两个问题可能有相同的机制。
数据取自五名患有SLI的儿童以及五名年龄和平均语句长度（MLU-w）匹配的对照儿童的自发语言。他们在两个时间点接受评估：3岁10个月和4岁9个月。然后对这些访谈进行转录，并对形态和语音错误进行编码。进行了非参数均值分析和各种回归分析。
结果表明，功能词省略和弱音节省略是讲西班牙语和加泰罗尼亚语的患有SLI的儿童最典型的错误，并确定随着韵律权重的降低，省略会增加。结果还表明，弱音节省略可能解释了大部分功能词省略。
数据支持表层假说，并表明相同的受损机制可能是SLI儿童所表现出的形态和语音问题的基础。
